To: Participants and interested persons
Attention Seminar, Spring 1999

Appended is (1) the previously circulated email announcement and (2) an update.

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(1) PREVIOUSLY CIRCULATED EMAIL ANNOUNCEMENT
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Subject: Spring Quarter Attention Seminar

From:  sperling@uci.edu   (George Sperling)
To: Graduate students in Cognitive Sciences, IMBS, Psychobiology
Subject: Spring 1999 course/seminar on "Attention"

A graduate seminar on "attention" is being considered for the Spring quarter,
pending sufficient enrollment. The first three lectures would review basic
background material: methodology and historically important articles.  The
remainder of the course would be conducted as a seminar with participants
presenting recent articles for discussion and evaluation.  The seminar will
consider with both psychophysical measurements and theories of attention as
well as neural network models and brain imaging.

The seminar would be conducted jointly by Profs. G. Sperling and B. Dosher.
The course number is Psych 229.
The tentative meeting time is Friday, 1:00 - 4:00p.
   
If you would register for this seminar, if offered, please RSVP by Email.

The response categories of are:

(2) Definitely would register for Psych 229

(1) Might register ... keep me on list for Psych 229

(0) Other  (no need to respond)

Comments are welcome.

Thanks.        <  sperling@uci.edu   >

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(2)  ADDITIONAL INFO
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Psych 229: Course code: 66812, Fridays 1:00 - 3:50; Room SSPB 3249

Faculty participants:

George Sperling, UCI
Barbara Dosher, UCI
Zhong-Lin Lu, USC

   The first meeting will be a lecture by the faculty participants on
background material--psychophysical methods used in the study of attention
and the corresponding theories; the next two meetings will combine lecture
and seminar mode.   The remaining meetings will be entirely seminars
in which students present summaries and discussions of recent research
articles.  The student presentations will be 15 min (approx) because that
is the time limit for most presentations at professional meetings.
Following, there will be additional discussion.  Each student is expected
to make (at least) three presentations.  Grading will be a letter grade
on the basis of the class presentations plus a (not-to-long) term paper.
   The aim of the course is to prepare students to carry out purely
psychophysical attention experiments and psychophysical attention
experiments with brain imaging.  Therefore, there will be an emphasis on
methodology: How to do it; how to analyze the data; how to make theories
that are efficient and accurate representations of the data and consistent
with what is known about the functional and physiological processes of
attention.
  
   Class notes and some materials will (eventually) be available on the
internet:
           http://www.socsci.uci.edu/HIPLab

   Reading for the first class meeting(s):  Literature reviews and overviews
of the psychophysics of attention and of simple computational theories:

Sperling, G. & Dosher, B.  Strategy and optimization in human information
processing. In Boff, K., Kafuman, L. & Thomas, J. (Eds.), Handbook of
Perception and Performance.  Vol. 1, NY: Wiley, 1986.  Pp. 2-1 to 2-65.

Shiffrin, R. M. (1987).  Attention.
In Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology, 2nd edition.
Eds.: R. C. Atkinson, R. J. Herrnstein, G. Lindzey, and R. D. Luce.
New York: Wiley.

Sperling, G., and Weichselgartner, E. (1995).
Episodic theory of the dynamics of spatial attention.
Psychological Review, 102, 503-532.

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 Prof. George Sperling                       (949) 824-6879 (Office)
 Depts: Cognitive Sciences                   (949) 824-3772 (Adm Asst)
        Neurobiology and Behavior            (949) 824-2517 (Fax)
 University of California                    Email:  sperling@uci.edu 
 Irvine CA 92697                      http://www.socsci.uci.edu/HIPLab
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